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It's time to fold on Susan Rice

President Barack Obama should not make the mistake of getting bogged down in a political battle with Senate Republicans over Susan Rice's potential nomination as U.S. secretary of state.

There are bigger battles ahead for Obama that need immediate attention. The nation's fiscal condition has reached a critical stage with Bush-era tax cuts set to expire Jan. 1. Plus, the U.S. economy is stagnating. Low growth estimates for the next two years, fall way short of providing the impetus for sizable job creation needed to put 23 million jobless people back to work.

It would be positively unproductive for President Obama to squander a great deal of political cache trying to get Rice through a contentious confirmation process.

Fresh off his re-election victory, Obama has an opening to show true leadership in Washington on key issues that matter to the American people. Rice's future is not one of them.

Obama should be brokering a deal on comprehensive tax reform with Republican leaders.

That would be a legacy to be proud of.

Obama appears to be itching for a fight, however. Sadly, he and other Democrats are wielding the race-and-gender card like a gauntlet to get Rice, an African American, into a key Cabinet slot. Is this what we can expect every time Obama wants to give a job to a minority?

Rice is damaged goods. As our ambassador to the United Nations, she was used by the Obama administration to mislead the American people about the Sept.

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11 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were murdered in the assault.

Rice should have had the courage to stand up for the truth. She took Obama's talking points -- that the attack was a random protest of an anti-Muslim film made in the United States -- and spread it on five Sunday morning television news shows. Yet, Rice knew five days ahead of her TV appearances that, according to the CIA, the al-Qaida network planned and implemented the high-powered attack on the 11th anniversary of terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

According to former CIA Director David Petraeus, the Obama administration deleted essential details of the CIA's assessment report to water down al-Qaida connection. The reason is clear: Obama was running for re-election based on his record of killing Osama bin Laden and dismantling the terror group.

It's disgraceful.

If Rice thought she was being a good soldier for the Obama administration, she's right. She took a hit for them. Now she must suffer the consequences. She is unfit to be secretary of state, where trust and honesty are expected to be part of every frank conversation concerning America's global interests. The safety and the security of the American people are at stake, not the re-election of the White House's occupants. Rice should have questioned the administration's reports, instead of blindly repeating false information.

If Obama continues to push for Rice's nomination, all for the wrong reasons, we can see wider congressional fissures developing in the months ahead. The next four years could turn into a brutal political slugfest, with Obama, Congress and the American people coming out the losers.

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